The Past is a Wild Party
My new monologue cum performance essay, The Past is a Wild Party, is in rehearsal with the wonderful, evergreen Siren Theatre Co. It’s being directed by long-time collaborator, Kate Gaul, and performed by Jules Billington, with lighting design by Benjamin Brockman and sound design/composition by Madeleine Picard.
The Writer takes a journey through archives, sexual politics and their own queer history. To create their chosen family. It’s about falling a little bit in love with nineteenth-century poet Amy Levy. Passionate friendships and whether a girl can be your boyfriend. Trash and high art. Immersing yourself in lesbian pulp from the 1950s. Censorship. Gaps and silences. Outing yourself—as someone with mental health issues. The Past is a Wild Party is about reading The Well of Loneliness in your teens and looking for—let’s call it ‘technical information’ about girl-on-girl sex.
The monologue cum performance essay is a hybrid I’ve developed which draws not only on the essay and the theatrical monologue, but also on field reports, memoir, spoken word, cultural criticism, and the traditions of the literary salon and the public talk. The Past is a Wild Party completes a trilogy I began with Good With Maps (multiple seasons 2016 – 2021) and The End of Winter (Sydney 2022, touring 2023 – 2025).
The Past is a Wild Party opens on Wednesday 10 July at the Loading Dock Theatre at Qtopia, 301 Forbes Street, Darlinghurst. It runs until Saturday 27 July.
Noëlle Janaczewska 